Stocks pricing in a new recession

[villager]

Commentary: Economic numbers look terrible

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- You know it’s going to be a wild day in the market when investors look to Silvio Berlusconi for a pep talk. The Italian prime minister, speaking to his country’s Parliament Wednesday night in Rome, did his best to talk up the markets with pledges of cost cuts, yet he could not change the fact that Italy has become the new Greece. With all that entails.

If it’s August it must be time for another chapter of the European crisis. But markets around the world, including in the U.S. these last two weeks, are forecasting something more sinister. The eight-day decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA -2.47% — snapped Wednesday with a paltry almost 30-point gain — shows that investors are discounting a new recession next year.

The latest batch of economic reports are almost too weak to digest, though that didn’t stop MarketWatch’s Washington bureau chief from compiling them into a terrifying summer reading assignment on Wednesday. See chronicle of gloom.

If the payrolls and unemployment numbers on Friday are anywhere near as bad as they are expected to be, then stocks could get even worse next week. Economists predict July’s nonfarm payrolls grew by a meager 75,000, and that the unemployment rate stood pat at 9.2%.

Anything weaker than 75,000, or a worst-case scenario of a negative number, could spur a stampede out of equities.

<snip>

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/stocks-pricing-in-a-new-recession-2011-08-04

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[DJ13]

2. The wealthy wouldnt be facing another recession if

they hadnt insisted that the debt ceiling deal had to only hurt those in the lower classes, the very same people those wealthy rely on to buy the products the corporations they invested in need to maintain profits.

[Fuddnik]

3. New?

When did the last one end?

[obxhead]

4. It didn't.

Some people were fooled by the pretty speech though.